Queensland wife given just 28 days to leave Australia

A SHOCK visa rejection is threatening an Australian marriage as a woman has been given 28 days to leave the country and her husband in Brisbane.

Dual Argentinian and Italian citizen Barbara Sanchez has called Australia home for seven years, and hoped to make that permanent when she and her husband Lyndon Tyers applied for a partnership visa earlier this year.

The long-term couple married in January 2015 with hopes of starting a family in Mr Tyers' home town of Brisbane.
But a decision by the Australian government has turned their plans for the future upside down.

In an online petition pleading for support for the decision to be reviewed, Mr Tyers wrote:

"My wife and I were shocked to receive the unexpected news that after applying for the second time our Partner Visa, with no valid reasons, had been rejected again.

"We were told that Barbara is being deported and has 28 days to leave Australia, the country in which she has been living for the past seven years, the country after all these years she calls home."

Mr Tyers said Ms Sanchez has been told she must leave Australia by July 15, and has been given the option to live offshore for "up to two years or as long as it takes for the Partner Visa to be approved", either with her husband or on her own.

It is understood the reason the couple was given for the decision had to do with a previous partner visa Mr Tyers had applied for with his ex-girlfriend.

The application was submitted four years ago and reportedly cancelled shortly after it was approved when the woman moved back to France.

The couple plans to contact government officials to support their "desperate cause", and has started an online petition on Change.org to be delivered to the Department of Immigration and Border Protection.

Mr Tyers has said if his wife is forced to leave he will of course go with her, but has expressed shock at the suggestion he leave his country as well.

"I am an Australian citizen and it is being proposed that I leave my own country and as an Australian citizen I don't feel that my basic rights have been met," he said.

The decision has affected the entire family, according to Mr Tyers' mother who took to Facebook to share her concern.

"My daughter-in-law is a precious member of our family, beloved wife of Lyndon, our son, and has done nothing to warrant deportation as she has lived a gentle, loving life in Australia without recourse to any financial aid from the government," she wrote.

The decision comes as the federal government has proposed a crackdown on Australian citizenship tests.